MOBILE, Alabama — It took almost 20 years for law enforcement officers to find the man who abducted and raped a Citronelle woman and less than two hours for a jury to bring him to justice.

The Mobile County Circuit Court jury today found Willie Kevin Williams, 43, guilty of first-degree rape, first-degree robbery and second-degree kidnapping. Circuit Judge Rick Stout scheduled sentencing for Oct. 18; because of his criminal record, the defendant faces an automatic life prison sentence with the possibility for parole.

“I am thrilled for the victim in this case, who has waited for almost 20 years for justice,” Chief Assistant District Attorney Deborah Tillman said following the verdict.

The victim, who now lives in Sylacauga, was taking accounting classes at a local college and working at a takeout restaurant in February 1993. She was driving home from work that Feb. 12 evening when she noticed her car running hot and pulled into a gas station.

From there, according to her testimony, a stranger forced her to drive her to a trailer on an overgrown lot on Broad Street and proceeded to rape her before stealing $2.

The case file sat cold for nearly two decades before Mobile Police Lt. Joseph Rose took a fresh look at a partial fingerprint taken from the door of the victim’s car. That right thumbprint matched a name in a national fingerprint database: Willie K. Williams. Investigators later matched a Williams’ DNA to a sample taken from a sanitary pad worn by the victim using a second national database.

All that was left was to track down Williams. Police found him living in Navarre, Florida, and arrested him last year. They determined that he had a lengthy criminal history, including the mugging of a woman about six months before the rape in roughly the same part of the city.

“Forensic evidence is hard to overcome regardless of its weaknesses,” said defense attorney Glenn Davidson, who added that his client would appeal.

Jurors heard testimony about the forensic evidence. For good measure, the woman also testified about her ordeal and pointed to the defendant as the man who forced her to drive him from a gas station at Cottage Hill and Demetropolis roads in downtown Mobile.

Davidson tried to knock down both her testimony and the physical evidence. He pointed to inconsistencies between some of the details of the woman’s description and what she told police in 1993, suggesting that her memory after 19 years was unreliable.

He pointed to inconsistencies in the testimony of a pair of fingerprint analysts who testified about the thumbprint. Although they both testified it was a match to Williams, they disagreed over how many minutia points the match was. Davidson also pointed out that it was impossible to determine when the print got on the car.

Finally, the defense lawyer put on an expert witness to challenge the DNA report by the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences. The expert testified that it was impossible to draw a definitive conclusion from the testing, because the DNA taken from the sanitary pad was not a complete sample.

Forensic investigators were able to compare 11 of 16 genetic locations to the defendant, and although all of the were a match, Davidson argued that the missing five locations opened up the possibility that his client was not the right man.